Just a quick entry to let you know that further to my posting about some of the seamier business enterprises, especially the Jet Ski rental issues, things have heated up.
This week, Thai TV Channel 3 broadcast footage of a You Tube video shot in Pattaya, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmoNpmCk3q4 a major tourist location 2 hours out of Bangkok. It is a place I have been to once and decided that I would never go to again. As my Thai friend would say "Not my style".
In the video it shows the jet ski scam in action, including the usual one of you get told you caused damage and suddenly the 1200 Baht jet ski adventure costs you 40,000 Baht. In the video they have people being threatened with physical violence, one scene has an operator pull out a rifle to
threaten the people and some very unflattering shots of the police, implying complicity. Then the usual escorting of the tourist to the ATM or their hotel to get the money.
I see many warnings about the jet ski issue on various web sites, like Trip Advisor, various blogs and lots of You Tube shots. Yet I still see people come on vacation and get hooked. So I do not think that there can be too many posting to warn people. Unfortunately there are decent jet ski operators, at least I like to believe that, who will bear the brunt of the actions of the greedy unscrupulous ones. I was recently at the Six Sense Regatta and saw an amazing product. It is a pair of plain Jane sunglasses with an embedded video camera on the frame. I think it would be great for some of those to be utilized by people on beach chairs adjacent to the jet ski operators and get even more footage. I am convinced that unless this gets shamed to bankruptcy, it will not stop. And maybe the capitalism model will deliver by drying up the customers and making people change behaviour or perish because no one will rent jet ski's.
In the meantime, I can not stress enough, that your vacation can be a pleasant one, without the thrill of the jet ski ride, and probably may turn a great vacation into a nightmare if you do rent the jet ski. I see the Governor of Krabi has taken the step of banning them from the beaches there, as well as other less than tourist friendly, enterprises. He actually seems to get the concept that people come to beach paradises to rest and relax, and enjoy the natural beauty of paradise! And he does something about it!
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